The Girl from the Garden Read online

  That’s how Fatimeh finds them, asleep in each other’s arms, naked under the korsi. She recognizes the wet chador stained red and bulging with pomegranates. She follows the muddy footprints up the stairs and across the marble of the breezeway, pushes open the door into the sitting room against the mound of wet clothes, sees the two girls asleep on the rug, Khorsheed snoring gently.

  Fatimeh picks up the soaked pile of clothes and shuts the door softly behind her. She walks to the kitchen to pour more water into the samovar for the chai. She was much younger than Khorsheed when she herself married and bore her first child, born with its face clenched up and clutching at the cord wrapped like a black snake around its throat. Rakhel’s age when she bled out her second child, two months before it was due. Both had been girls. By then, her husband was already old, working as a servant in the governor’s office in the plaza of the city. “Should the Lord have seen them fit to live, my daughters would have married by now,” she says out loud. “They would have had children of their own.” She wrings out the water from the girls’ clothes and imagines holding the warm, fat bodies of her grandchildren, imagines kissing the soft pink flesh of their arms and legs. She might have lived with her daughters, in the house of their husbands, raising those children. She shuffles to the hearth to tend to a pot.

  “G-d is great,” she says beneath her breath. She begins hanging the clothes from a rope drawn from one kitchen wall to the other. “G-d is great,” she repeats, wiping her eyes with the hem of her chador. “G-d is great, G-d is great.”

  Snow covers the ground. And in the snow, footprints this way and that. The men’s footprints lead toward the stables, the horses’ footprints toward the gate, the women’s footprints back and forth to the central pool, the kitchen, to the steps leading into the cellar. The sun travels a low arc in the sky and, not too long after making its appearance, it sets. In the kitchen, the girls work fast, their fingers stained a deep purple, their black chadors wrapped around their bodies to protect their clothes. Rakhel sits on the ground and Khorsheed squats, her belly resting between her thighs. Cracked and whole pomegranates form a mountain between them, beside which stands a bucket of the red skins with empty white combs and a crystal bowl full of the glistening, ruby seeds. Fast, their fingers remove the seeds into the bowl. Red juice pools beneath their hands, splatters onto their arms.

  Zolekhah stands by the doorway of the kitchen, waiting for Fatimeh to return from the cellar with the fruit stored in the late summer for this very night. Sadiqeh and Zahra silently scrub cooking pots by the fountain, their breaths visible. Fatimeh returns, carrying a large watermelon. She sets it on the ground and poises the knife on the tip of the melon’s tight green skin. One move and the whole melon cracks open, the flesh crisp and jagged, the heart red, surrounded by black teeth. She removes the rind and cuts the flesh into square pieces, then arranges the pieces on a silver tray. Fatimeh leaves and returns from the cellar again, this time with a basket of persimmons. She moves her legs briskly up and down for warmth, her arms clenched to her body. She shakes her shoulders and heads back into the cold afternoon to tell one of the girls to wash the fruit in the nearly frozen pool.

  The women work silently, the dim light of the day having made them somber and lethargic, though the cold keeps them moving. When the women are finished arranging the fruits, they shuffle across the snow toward the five doors of the sitting room. They place the trays on the tables while Fatimeh pokes at the coals in the small brazier, places the low table over it, and drapes the blanket over the table. The girls push the chairs out of the way and gather the large pillows to spread around the blanket. Wordlessly, they leave the room. Sadiqeh and Zahra nod good-bye to the others and walk to the gate, where their husbands await to escort them home. Fatimeh retires to her room for the evening, to say her prayers, eat her dinner, and drift to sleep. The rest of the women leave for their private bedrooms, to prepare for the evening. All that is left of the sun is a streak of orange against the horizon.

  Rakhel peers through her window in time to see Asher leading his horse back across the courtyard toward the stables. Ibrahim follows silently behind him. When they return to the courtyard, they both stop near the pool, and she watches them hold council, as is their custom each night, before they part. Asher speaks at length and Ibrahim listens, nodding in agreement. Then Asher takes his leave, and Ibrahim walks toward his bedroom where Khorsheed sits brushing her hair by the lit window.

  Asher walks past Rakhel’s room toward his private study, his gaze down, his hands clasped behind his back. Rakhel waits a moment, then steals quietly down the breezeway toward the study. Through the window, she watches Asher light a lantern and walk to the gramophone. He turns the crank, carefully sets the needle down, and, after a few moments, closes his eyes.

  Rakhel knocks softly on the door. He must be listening to his music, the records he orders from merchants he knows in faraway places like Austria and France. Places where men play instruments and catch the music on flat, black plates, music which sounds different from what she hears played by musicians at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

  “Asher?” Rakhel calls from behind the door. “Asher, may I come in?” He does not respond. She cracks the door wider and calls his name again. He keeps his back to the door, and looks out of the window at the snow-covered courtyard.

  She walks to him and places her hand on his back. He turns quickly and catches her wrist. He looks her in the eyes for a few moments, then brings her open hand to his lips and kisses her palm. Rakhel, unaccustomed to such tenderness from him, trembles at his touch. He pulls her into his chest, lowers his face into her hair, and breathes in. Then he holds her an arm’s length away to look at her. The record stops. It is silent in the room, save for Asher’s heavy breathing. Rakhel drops her eyes in shame. Asher takes her chin in his fingers and lifts her face until he is looking into her eyes again. He brushes his fingers across her cheek, traces a line down her neck, then he draws her to him and places his large hand under her shirt against the tight skin of her stomach. He moves his hands up the warmth of her flesh to where it rises into the small mounds of her breast, her nipples hard against his palm. Hastily, without warning, he pulls her jacket off of her arms, lifts her shirt over her head until she stands before him in the soft lamplight, looking down at her own thin arms, her small taut breasts, her tight abdomen. She raises her arms to cover her chest and he pushes them back down.

  “I want to look at you,” he says. She keeps her head down, biting her lower lip to keep her teeth from chattering with cold and fear. “Look at me,” he says. She raises her eyes to meet his. “When will you give me a child?” he asks. She shudders and he draws her roughly back into his chest, lifts her chin with his fingers again to look into her eyes. “When?” he asks.

  Now, she trembles violently against his body. With his other hand, Asher unties the waistband of her tumban, it falls to the floor and Rakhel stands with the skirt of her shaliteh covering her navel, the upper part of her thighs. He reaches his hand and pulls the shaliteh down her legs. She stands naked in the lamplight, her arms straight by her side, and looks at her feet. Her skin is raised in gooseflesh, the soft hairs standing, her legs pressed tight against each other. She bends slightly forward as if readying herself to take a blow from his clenched fist. He looks at her, then pulls her down onto the rug.

  “I want a child,” he whispers harshly into her ear as he struggles above her to push his own clothes out of the way. “I am tired of this waste,” he says. “I want a child and I will give you until spring.”

  After dinner, Rakhel sits silently beside Khorsheed, who rests her legs under the heated blanket and eats spoon after spoon of pomegranate seeds. Rakhel keeps her eyes on the trays and platters that wait in a pile on the sofre, with the remains of food and pools of oil gathered in them. The conversation, as customary when there are no guests, is between Asher, Ibrahim, and Zolekhah. Khorsheed tried whispering with Rakhel at the beginning of the meal, but found Rakhel
unresponsive and thus, busied herself with the task of eating. Rakhel tried to eat, too, but the food repulsed her.

  Rakhel tries to look everywhere but at her husband. She imagines the servants washing the trays and the plates. She listens to Khorsheed hum to herself while she chews. When Rakhel does catch a glimpse of Asher sitting at the head of the sofre, a weakness takes hold of her arms and legs, and a strange dizziness clouds her eyes. Her mind begins to drift, but each time Asher begins to speak, the sound of his voice slaps her back to rigid attentiveness.

  “I have decided what to do about the goyim bread maker Haydaree’s demand for a jazieh. The tax for being Jewish has been abolished since Nasir al-Din Shah, and these ruffians still think they can strong-arm money from us,” Asher says. He turns to address his mother. “He says either we sell our wheat to him half price, or else he’ll go to the authorities and complain about the proximity of Jews doing business beside Muslim merchants at the caravansary.” Asher takes a handful of sunflower seeds from a bowl. He places a seed between his teeth, cracks and spits the shell to the floor, and chews the meat.

  Ibrahim leans over and takes a handful, too. “He suffers, brother, like everyone else with the rise in the price of grains,” he says. “Perhaps it might be wise to pay him, a mitzvah, and forget the whole ordeal?”

  Asher continues cracking, spitting, chewing for a few moments, then turns to his brother and says, “So that every other bastard can come along and demand their own price? We have already kept our prices low. All that is left is for us to give the wheat away for free. I will send a couple of Kurdish farmers to respond to his proposal. We are men, even if the laws insist otherwise. It is time to set an example and Haydaree is the perfect opportunity. It happens thus, time to time, when we need to respond with a measured violence, to prove that we are not as vulnerable as they think. There comes a time when a man must act as a man.”

  Ibrahim still holds a seed in the palm of his hand and looks at it, before he finally cracks it between his teeth. “Perhaps you are right, brother,” he says. “Though I spoke to the rabbi this very afternoon about this topic, at length. He said that compassion, even for one’s enemies, is a necessity for spiritual growth.”

  Asher brushes off his hands, leans forward and says, “Speaking of compassion, did you ask the rabbi about Kokab’s situation?”

  “Briefly. Like everyone else, he wanted to leave early for Yalda,” Ibrahim says.

  “Kokab, your cousin Eliyahoo’s wife?” Zolekhah asks.

  “Nullified yesterday,” Asher says. “Eliyahoo divorced her officially and took her back to her brothers’ home.”

  “There’s been talk among the women for months. Rumor says she bared her arms before a gardener or some such nonsense?” Zolekhah asks.

  “Our cousin has always been a lazy man, a brute and a drunk,” Asher says. “I am certain that Eliyahoo found it too difficult to keep a wife and has fabricated this story to hide his own shame.”

  “His sisters say that he plans to keep their young daughter and will refuse to allow Kokab to see her, even from a distance, for fear that the girl will learn from her mother’s lewd nature,” Zolekhah says.

  “The poor wretched woman, to bring such calamity and shame upon her family,” Ibrahim says.

  “Yes, but from loss one can still profit,” Asher says. He clears his throat. “Ibrahim and I have discussed this matter at length, with the rabbi. I plan to ask Kokab’s brothers for her hand in marriage, as a second wife.”

  A heaviness settles in the room, the way a fog sometimes comes in at night, rapidly. It is a tangible thickness Rakhel can feel. It muffles the rest of the words Asher speaks. It makes breathing arduous. Zolekhah stares at Asher, then looks at her. From a tremendous distance, Rakhel hears Asher say, “If by spring, Rakhel has not conceived . . .”

  “It is a mitzvah, this decision, an act of compassion,” Ibrahim says.

  “Yes,” Asher says. “Kokab will be rescued from shame, her brothers will be free of their burden, and I may have children through her still, if G-d sees it fit.”

  Rakhel stands up in alarm and looks about the room. The door. She must reach the door, open it to the cold night air, before this heaviness buries her beneath its weight. She walks slowly in that direction, reaches the latch, pushes the door open. Rakhel watches herself as though she is not within herself, but standing somewhere, a witness to her own escape. There is Rakhel, stepping out into the night, and there she walks, barefoot, against the ice-cold marble, down the steps, through the snow toward her dark room.

  Rakhel enters the stillness of her bedroom, and walks to the mirror. She sees the reflection of her embroidered head scarf, her black hair, but she can’t make out the features of her own face. No eyes, no lips, no nose. She looks down at her feet and searches her memory to see if her face exists somewhere in the recesses of her mind. Her eyes are brown, yes, her nose has a slight bump, but it is not unattractive. She sees these parts as fragments, separate from each other, but she can’t fit together the pieces to recall the whole they create. She puts her hands on the frame of the mirror, brings her face closer to the silver surface, and meets her own eyes. When she can see the reflection of her eyes, she takes a step back to look at the whole of her face. The girl looking back at her smiles. Rakhel shudders, turns away from the mirror, and covers her face with her hands.

  In the sitting room, Khorsheed weeps. Zolekhah pats her hand repeatedly and says, “No, child, you mustn’t allow yourself to cry. Consider the poor lamb in your womb. You must be calm for your baby.”

  “Khorsheed,” Ibrahim says. Khorsheed stops sobbing and looks at him. “Enough.” Khorsheed whimpers and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go to your room.” Khorsheed begins to cry, again, silently. “No more crying. Go to bed.” Khorsheed rises to leave.

  Once she is gone, Zolekhah turns to Asher and says, “Perhaps you should have discussed it with me, first, son.”

  “It was not a matter for discussing,” Asher says.

  “Of course it is a topic for discussion. Look how upset you have made everybody. You are bringing another person into this family, somebody we all must live with.”

  “Mother, it is not a matter for discussing.”

  “There are ways of doing things, Asher. Proper ways of doing things.”

  “Nothing has been done, yet. I have not gone to her brothers, I haven’t spoken to anybody. This was the private announcement of my intentions, that’s all.”

  “You should have discussed it with me first. Then, I could have instructed you on how to tell Rakhel, first, rather than shaming her in front of all of us. There are certain words a man should say to his wife . . .”

  “Wife? What sort of wife is she to me if she cannot do her sole task?”

  “She is human, nonetheless. There would have been a better way to tell her.”

  “What better way, Mother? What better way to tell her that I will marry again, that she will have a havoo?” Asher leans toward his mother, his fists clenched against his side and hisses, “And what business of hers is it, besides? A girl to decide my fate? A girl who cannot do what even a stupid cow can do with ease?” Asher picks up the bowl of pomegranate seeds and throws it against the wall across the room.

  “Brother, please,” Ibrahim says and places a hand on Asher’s arm.

  Zolekhah stares at her son steadily. Asher looks back at her, red with rage. “For what reason must I waste everything I have built? For what reason? For her, Mother? For a worthless girl?” Asher clenches his jaw, pushes Ibrahim’s hand away and stands to leave. “A man who has no son, Mother, is no man at all.”

  In her room, Rakhel turns to look back at the reflection in the mirror. The girl in the mirror watches her, too. She studies the outline of Rakhel’s body. Too lean. Her breasts too small. Her stomach caves in, her limbs are too hard, her arms too long, her legs too long, her feet too big, her skin too dark. “Why did You choose me to curse?” Rakhel asks. She throws herself at the
mirror with her fists clenched, but the surface only bounces back slightly. She hits her forehead against it, hits her clenched fists against it, again and again and again, not noticing the small veins that cracked in the surface of the glass where she pounds, or the walls shaking. She hears a distant screaming, though it is her own voice. Then, the clear sound of shattering glass.

  Four

  Outside it is night. There will be frost in the morning, the concrete treacherous, the grass white, the rooftops, too. The kettle whistles. Mahboubeh rises from the table and measures out tea leaves. She remembers the last time she saw her uncle Asher. He sat in the courtyard, in the snow, looking at the pool and fountain. He must have been returning from the caravansary, because he wore a heavy wool coat over his clothes. He walked into the courtyard, but rather than heading to his private study to place a record on the gramophone, which was his custom, he stopped and sat on the steps beneath the fresco and looked at the fountain for a long, long time. A few days later, he died. Mahboubeh remembers that she was asleep in her room when Rakhel walked in and sat beside her bed and said, very calmly, “Asher is dead.”

  By then, Rakhel already had her son, Asher’s sole heir. Her position in the household was firm. So when she announced Asher Malacouti’s death, Rakhel’s voice was clear of the panic that should have followed such a statement. And clear of sentiment, too. She spoke as though discussing a settlement of accounts. “Asher is dead,” she said, then rose and left.

  Mahboubeh pours herself a cup of tea and wonders what her uncle sat reckoning that cold, late afternoon as he gazed at the fountain. He was not a man to give to idle thought. Perhaps in that moment, whether he knew of his encroaching final hour or not, he stopped to consider the value of his life. Certainly he had earned respect, built an empire, but what about love? Did he love, was he loved in return? Nothing in Rakhel’s voice hinted at a loss of love when she announced his death, though in those days, love was not a factor to determine any marriage.